Vol 2 Chapter 5 (2/2)

‘cause I can’t go back to my house! Maybe you could, oh, I dunno, take me

to your house, a.s.shole!” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop

them. The pain is making me lose my temper. At first I think I’m going to

regret saying that, but the girl just nods in understanding, letting the entire

thing slide.

“That it? Well, that’s a simple request. If my house is fine with you, then

you’re welcome to stay.”

Without even helping me to stand up by myself or offering a helping

hand, she starts to walk again, the movement of her back telling me to

keep close and follow. With renewed strength to my step that I didn’t know

from where in my battered body I obtained, I pursue her. The sound of her

clacking steps, and the sensation of the asphalt and broken bottle gla.s.s

beneath my feet seemed to make both the pain on my body and mind ebb.

Though I haven’t even asked her if she lived alone, or even what her name

was, I think it too insignificant for the moment. I only see her silhouette,

dimly lighted, guiding me like fate. It is the only thing I can see.

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - II • 57

Paradox Spiral - II

I hear the sound. An ominous metallic click, coming from the other

room.

The time must be almost ten ‘o clock. Dead tired from working my job

into the late hours of the evening, I immediately resigned myself to the

safety of my mattress after I got home. But it isn’t even a few minutes

before I am stirred from sleep by the sound. I heard it only once, but that

is enough.

The door to my room opens, letting a slit of white light into my darkened

room, widening slowly with each inch of the door that is parted. A shadow

occludes the light, and I turn to towards it only to see my mom.

It’s always around this part that I realize, and wish that I could never see

this scene again.

The light makes it difficult to make out any detail on her figure save for

the fact that she is standing. However, what little I can see of the scene

beyond the doorway is clear to my eyes: my dad, collapsed over the dining

room table. It isn’t clear at first whether he is merely unconscious or dead,

but it isn’t long before I see what I first perceive to be some sort of spilled

coffee. It slowly dawns on me that it is blood, dying the varnished brown

table into a deep red. It is then that the shadow in front of the door speaks.

“Die, Tomoe.”

I remember what comes afterwards. My mother advances, kneels in

front of me, raises the kitchen knife high above her, and brings it down on

my chest, then up, then down again, too many times for me to count. Then

I see her taking the same knife to her throat, then in a single, determined

motion, plunges it deep into her neck.

All of my nights are bookended by this nightmare, the worst I ever have.

I hear the sound. An ominous click, through which I wake up.

I turn my eyes toward the bed, only to find Ryōgi gone. I lift up my

bruised and battered body to observe where I find myself in: a house in the

nook of the second floor of a four-floor low rise, the house of the kimono

wearing girl. Well, better to call it a room than a house, really. A one-meter

long corridor barely deserving the label separates the front door and the

small living room, which, seeing as the bed which she slept in is also there,

probably also doubles as her bed room. Flanking the corridor to the right

is the door to the bathroom. Another door in the living room leads to

58 • KINOKO NASU

another, presumably unused, room. She led me to this place last night after

an hour’s walk. The name plaque that rested beside the entryway bore the

name “Ryōgi”, so that must be her last name.

That girl—Ryōgi—never said a thing when we entered her room, only

taking off her leather jacket and heading straight for her bed to fall asleep.

Her apathy almost provoked me to protest, but the last thing I wanted to

do was mouth off and have the neighbors be curious. After some consideration,

I took a cus.h.i.+on lying discarded on the floor and used it as a pillow,

then slept away.

And now I wake up with her nowhere to be found. I wonder what she

could be up to. It looks like our ages are quite close. Considering her age,

maybe she went to school? And yet, that wouldn’t be at all fitting for such

a drab room. The sum total of things in her room: a bed, a refrigerator, a

phone, a coat rack with four leather jackets, and a closet, which I a.s.sume is

for clothing. No TV, no radio, no throw-away magazines, and consequently,

no table to read them on.

I suddenly remember what she said last night. When I said I’d murdered

someone, she said she was the same. I only half-believed her last night,

but seeing her room, it might actually be true. Her pad seems to be set for

functionality, like a room designed not to be lived in, but instead for someone

who could suddenly be on the run at any time and could leave the

room behind. Thinking about what she said makes a chill run up my spine.

Did I think luck would allow me to draw the ace of spades, but instead

brought me the joker?

In any case, I don’t plan on staying any longer than I have to. I want to

at least give a word of thanks to Ryōgi for helping me out in a pinch, but

since she’s out, there’s really nothing I can do. With silent and careful steps

more befitting a burglar than a visitor, I make my exit from the mysterious

girl’s room.

Without heading toward any particular place, I loiter around town to kill

the time. Initially I am hesitant, even a bit scared, trying to make myself as

inconspicuous as possible, and think at first that I made the wrong decision.

But it soon becomes apparent that the world is turning like it always

did, with no one giving me a second glance. The days go on with all the

haste and weight of the hour hand on a clock. Somewhat disappointed at

the realization, I make my way to the main avenue.

It is here in the main avenue that I expected to find cops asking around

for a Tomoe Enjō, or at least people that might throw me the “I saw him

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - II • 59

on the 6am news” look, but there are none. Maybe the bodies haven’t

been found yet. Still, maybe I give myself too much credit. There’s no way

someone like me can affect people’s reactions to a noticeable degree with

such a half-baked murder. Either way, it seems, for the time being at least,

I’m not a fugitive. That being said, I still didn’t feel like going back.

Noon comes and pa.s.ses, and I find myself in Hachikō Square, right next

to s.h.i.+buya Crossing. I find a bench to rest on and feel content to spend

an hour or two just looking up at the neon lights set upon the buildings

stretching high into the sky. When the lights turn green, the cars stop to

give way to the mad press of people, flowing like water from a burst dam

across the large avenue. I can’t even imagine what it’s like when it’s a holiday.

The people are mostly teenagers like me, happily smiling and with a

levity to their walking pace, looking like they’re the most blessed individuals

in the universe. It’s the face of people in their world: a world where they

don’t aspire to anything anymore, or need to live for a good future. There’s

no need to. Their life is all laid out for them, and they know that’s all they

need to get by in their world. So how many of those smiles are real? All of

them, or only a handful? I keep looking at their faces, trying to figure out,

but it’s impossible to tell the real from the fake. I should have known better

than to try, since that realization comes from your own self.

Tired of looking at all the people moving to and fro, I instead cast my

eyes toward the sky. Let’s be frank. I’m as much a fake as the rest of them.

Maybe at some point in time, I thought that my life was good and real, but

reality soon stripped that away.

Junior high school was my time. I was a sprinter in the track and field

club, and I kicked a.s.s in it. I partic.i.p.ated in all of the inter-school compet.i.tions

and I never, ever lost. I never even saw anyone’s back. No one could

say anything about my skill. All I cared about was cutting my time, and

even a few milliseconds difference was enough to make me happy. I was an

engine built for the sport, and I cherished it more than anything.

It follows, of course, that all this came to a screeching halt.

My family was never one blessed with an abundance of money. Dad lost

his job back when I was still in grade school, and never got one back again.

Mom was born into a rich family, but had a falling out with them after she

ran away to marry my dad. Her world didn’t teach her anything about what

happens after that. I think that broken family did only one thing right for

me: force me to grow up faster than other kids. I had to juggle jobs after

school, lying about my age just to get in, all so I could sc.r.a.pe out money

to pay the tuition I needed. I stopped trying to care about the antics of my

parents, and began to focus only on what I could do right by myself: sustain

60 • KINOKO NASU

myself, go to school, and work my a.s.s off for tuition. I thought of running as

my only release from both the constant problem of living expenses and my

parents who to me no longer seemed anything of the sort, the only reason

I kept paying for school and going to the club activities without giving a

heed to how tired I was.

Our troubles only truly began when my dad took the car out without

a license one day. He was never really good with driving, but it had never

bothered him before if he had to take his time parking or maneuvering the

car. That day, however, whatever luck that had compensated for his skill

ran out, and he got involved in an accident. He ran a pedestrian over. It was

apparently a quick death for the unlucky guy. It forced my mom to go back

to her family, head bowed and pleading for money just to pay the cost for

indemnities. To me it was yet another f.u.c.kup that I needed to look away

from, and so I refrained from prying too deep. What eventually concerned

me is the fallout from all that. It didn’t take long for everyone at school to

find out about the incident, and though I thought nothing of it at first, I

found that the att.i.tude of everyone at school had changed. My coach, who

had always been more helpful than anyone I could remember, suddenly

started to ignore me. The uppercla.s.smen who were so proud to have me

as the rookie star of the track and field team pressured me to quit. All

because of something I had no part in; all because I was their son.

My family was the real problem. Losing what little money he’d saved

over to help pay for the accident, my dad was far from fit to keep a family

together. Mom started to work part-time in jobs society hadn’t prepared

her for and she had no real idea how to do, but even that only paid for a

portion of the gas and electricity bills. Rumors about the accident began

to infest my neighborhood, growing and catching its own embellishments,

to the point that dad couldn’t even get out of the house without so much

as an angry neighbor trying to give him a piece of their mind. Mom still

tried to work, but the rumors always caught up to her, and it never made

her stay in one place for too long. I remember one time I was just walking

around when some random n.o.body threw a rock at me. And always, there

were the threats.

Yet even though the abuses got worse and worse, I never could muster

the motivation to be mad at them. After all, the one driving the car, the

one really at fault then was my dad. It’s all his fault. But then it’s not like I

hated my folks in particular back then either, because it’s when I realized

that whatever you do, even if you try as hard as you can, no matter how

fast and how far you run, it’ll all be the same. You can’t escape your family,

your past, or what you are. I mean, my folks walked their own path, tried

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - II • 61

to live a life as best they could, and look where it got them. That’s when I

stopped trying to fight it. I figured if I just accepted it, then I wouldn’t have

anything to cry about. It’s the moment when you’re a kid and you throw

away your fantasies because they’re useless, and in its place grows a kind

of new, self-crafted wisdom.

After that, feeling that there was little else it could teach me, I quit school.

Besides, I had to work whole days now for the money. If you aren’t picky

there’s plenty of work to be done even for people my age. Being someone

still straddled with at least half a conscience, I couldn’t completely abandon

my family, and so I had to put money in the house. Still, that didn’t

mean I needed to talk to them. I never did after I quit high school. Slowly,

like a poison, the joy and exhilaration in running and sprinting that I’d once

found essential faded into dim memory, along with the faces of the people

who once cheered me on, and the cold wind whipping past my face. It was

something I’d thought I couldn’t ever live without at one point, and to find

that I’d essentially thrown it away gave me no small measure of surprise.

My mind made its customary excuses: I didn’t need it anymore, there were

more important things. But they were only excuses. I lost. I gave up.

That’s the proof that I’m fake. If “running” was some sort of origin, a

cosmic impetus laid out for the boy known as Tomoe Enjō, then I had failed

it. And maybe, my mind thought, things would have turned out better if I

had just indulged that call.

My parents took me to see a stud farm once when I was little. There I

looked at all the nameless horses, whose lives were bred and figures built

solely for the singular act of running, and I cried, thinking that if such a

thing as a previous incarnation was truer than a tale spun for the naïve

idea of destiny, then I must surely have been one of those beautiful beasts.

My pa.s.sion was born there. And it was killed by the weight of the real. I

ultimately amounted to nothing more than a sham, imbued with dreams

that only lie.

And in the end, I became a murderer. I laugh, though there is nothing

truly funny about it. The sky I look at hardly changes, and I turn my eyes

back to the spectacle of the city, where at least the people move, never

stopping, with their smiling and content faces, all of us dolls as fake as

anyone else with no real purpose. Or maybe they do have a real purpose:

to fool around. They are in s.h.i.+buya after all. That’s the brand of reality I

can’t really tolerate, though.

The collective footsteps of the throng bring me back to reality. Positioned

above the entryway to a nearby building is a clock, showing the time nearing

evening. Not wanting to loiter here any more than I’ve already allowed

62 • KINOKO NASU

myself, I push myself up and out of the bench and leave the ma.s.s of people,

heading for no particular direction.

Even here in the housing district the streetlamps s.h.i.+ne no brighter than

in any other part of the city. I’ve been walking aimlessly for the past three

hours, and the autumn sun has long since set, reminding me that I still

need a place to stay for the night. Without thinking about it, I find myself

back in the familiar façade of Ryōgi’s apartment building. Though I always

thought that I could let go of lingering affections easily when the situation

demanded it, judging by where my wandering feet took me, it seems that’s

not the case. I look to the second floor, and find that her window is dark.

Looks like she isn’t home.

“Well, since I’m here anyway…” I mutter under my breath as I start to

climb the stairs to the second floor, squaring myself with the fact that the

only reason I’m doing this is to hang on pathetically to the last person that

helped me in my life. The metal treaded staircase rings a harsh sound as

I ascend as if to announce my presence. Confronting the door of Ryōgi’s

room, I find that the newspaper that was slipped under her door as I left

this morning is nowhere to be found. At first I think that she’s inside, but

when I rap on the door, no response follows. So she came home at least

once. Deciding to leave if the door is locked, I reach for the doork.n.o.b and

turn it.

But it moves unhindered, and the door slips ever so slightly open. As

I saw back in the street, the lights inside look like they aren’t turned on.

In the silence, even the mechanical clicking of the doork.n.o.b is audible,

and for a moment, it freezes my hand and blanks my mind in hesitation.

Thinking myself ridiculous for standing there doing nothing for such a long

time, I slowly widen the opening I’ve made and creep inside. I probably

would never have thought as a kid that I would be committing trespa.s.s

after killing someone not a few days earlier, and yet here I am. Well, she did

say I was welcome in her house, but I don’t know if this is what she meant

by that.

While my mind is busy making excuses, my body is creeping forward,

closing the door, going past the entrance, past the short corridor, and

finally into her living room. It’s black as pitch in here. Nothing can be heard

except my m.u.f.fled footsteps and my suspiciously rough respiration. Man,

this makes me look like any random break and enter. f.u.c.k, I need a light.

The lights, where the f.u.c.k are the lights? I start to take a hand to the wall

and feel around for the switch.

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - II • 63

At that point, I hear the distinct sound of the front door opening. The

person turns on the lights faster than I could even begin to consider who

it is. As the fluorescent lamp casts a warm glow over the room, she looks

at me with slightly surprised eyes that blink twice before she starts talking.

“Oh, you’re here. I hope you weren’t doing anything inappropriate,

what with lights being off and all,” she says in the manner of someone just

berating a cla.s.smate. She closes the door and takes off her jacket, then sits

down on her bed, rifling through the plastic bag she’s holding and producing

a small cup. “Wanna eat it? Cold things just don’t do it for me.”

She tosses the cup toward me, and up close I can see that it’s a cup

of Haagen-Dazs strawberry. Why she doesn’t care about my trespa.s.sing

is as much a mystery to me as her buying something she doesn’t even

like. Taking the cold cup in my hands makes me think. She knows I’m a

murderer, though I don’t know how seriously she takes it. And yet she

offered her room to me. I remember what I thought this morning: that her

room looked like she was some sort of fugitive ready to run at a moment’s

notice.

“Square one thing with me, Ryōgi,” I say to her. “Are you someone I

should be keeping one eye open for when I sleep?”

Contrary to what I expect, she laughs quite heartily at my question.”You’re

a strange one, aren’t you? A nice way to phrase that question, I have

to say,” she says in between bouts of raucous laughter that throws her

already mismanaged hair into even greater disarray. The sight only tells me

to be more cautious than before. At length, her laughter finally starts to die

down, and she exhales one long breath before she continues to talk. “Hah,

well, it’s true that this place has a shortage of people that can carry themselves

in a fight better than I can. But hey, you’re here aren’t you? Since

we’re both stuck with our respective pieces of wood in each other’s eye,

let’s just leave them in there and keep our peace. Is that all you wanted to

talk about?”

The kimono-clad girl looks up at me with a dangerously calm countenance

of a child expecting to get a new present, her grin laden with meaning.

“No, there’s something else I need to ask. Why did you help me?”

“’Cause you asked me to, that’s why. I wasn’t doing anything at the

time anyway, so hey, what the h.e.l.l. By the way, you don’t have a place to

sleep right? I meant it when I said you could use my place for now. Not like

Mikiya’s going to come by in a while, anyway.”

Because she wasn’t doing anything? What the h.e.l.l kind of reason is that?

My brain might be a bit frazzled lately, but not to the extent that I’d believe

what she just said. I glare at her, which seems to garner no reaction. She

64 • KINOKO NASU

only ignores me, not—I sense—out of indifference, but of a dignified sort

of oblivion that just comes naturally to her. It’s an alluring paradox. Still, I

realize that Ryōgi hasn’t given me any real reason to lie to me. Maybe she

does have no particular reason to take me in. She could have invented any

number of excuses to leech money from me by doing this, but she didn’t.

But even so…

“Are you serious? You take me in no questions asked without even being

suspicious of me? You sure you aren’t high?”

“You are seriously damaging your goodwill here, buddy. And to answer

your question seriously, no I don’t take drugs, and to answer the question

percolating in your mind, no I didn’t report you to the police this morning.

Although I will if you tell me to.”

Well, nothing to worry about on that front. Besides, just the thought of

this person talking to the police in polite tones seems like an impossible

picture to paint in my mind. “Then what are you after? Is it a quick f.u.c.k,

because—”

“Huh? There’s far better places a man can go to for s.e.x in this town than

my place, that’s for d.a.m.n sure.”

“Well, see, what I’m saying is—”

“Alright, fine, whatever man! If you don’t like it here and you’re just

gonna stand there and criticize me then you know the way to the door,

buddy. I absolutely do not understand why you feel the need to judge every

word out of my mouth, you know that?”

Her words brook no refusal. A silence hangs between us, but is broken

by her rummaging through the plastic convenience store bag again, pulling

out a triangularly-shaped tomato sandwich. Well, if I had any doubts about

whether or not she thought nothing of me before, I don’t now.

“Well…then I’m sleeping over! You said it was fine, didn’t you?” I say

maybe a bit too loudly. Ryōgi, for her part, doesn’t even seem all that angry,

even though her words seem to indicate otherwise.

“Yeah, go ahead. I’ll be sure to tell you if your a.s.shole glands are working

up again,” she says while nibbling on the sandwich. At that, I suddenly

realize how tired I am and promptly sit myself down on the floor. Time

pa.s.ses, but I can’t seem to give a mind to how long or how short that lasts.

I turn my thoughts away from my little spat with Ryōgi to more practical

matters. I’d found a place to sleep, if only temporarily. The 30,000 yen in

loose change I hastily took with me should last me the month for food, but

finding some way to work so I can survive while still hiding from the cops

is going to be key.

Wait. Now I remember what I was supposed to ask Ryōgi. How could I

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - II • 65

forget?

“Hey,” I call to her. “Why ain’t your door locked?”

“Lost the key, obviously.” Her answer is almost like a blow to the back

of my head. “I only lock the door when I’m sleeping, and I just close the

door when I’m out. Works for me, and as you can see, not much here for a

burglar to burgle.”

So my attempted trespa.s.sing wasn’t just some lucky coincidence. Her

not locking the room might even be the reason for why she barely has

anything in the room. Some regular thief could be slipping in and just stealing

what isn’t nailed down. It’s too much of an a.s.sault on my regular sensibility

that I have to tell her off.

“Christ, girl. You could at least ask for a spare one from the landlord.”

“Lost the spare too. C’mon, it’s not as if you have to worry about it, and

it’s not as if I need one.”

It’s really starting to grate on me how she just takes everything in stride.

I can’t have any sort of peace of mind without a key. Meanwhile, Ryōgi

here seems to lack the part of your brain that’s supposed to sound warning

alarms when you aren’t secure even in your own home. I forget about

my anger toward her some minutes ago and replace it with worry for this

reckless girl.

“A house without a key ain’t a house. Just you wait; I’ll get you a new key.”

An idea suddenly forms in my mind. I remembered the last job I managed

to hold down, until two days ago at least, was in a moving company. I got

to learn a few things about fixing some household related stuff, so a simple

doork.n.o.b replacement wouldn’t be beyond me. They must have some

kind of regular doork.n.o.b in that warehouse of theirs. “No, scratch that. I’ll

replace the whole d.a.m.n thing.”

“Well, whatever floats your boat. Do you have money for it?”

“Of course I do. It’s the least I could do for you. In fact, I’ll even do it

tonight, so you’ll have no problem tomorrow!”

And on saying that, I stand up immediately, filled with a force of will

whose origin even I couldn’t even begin to guess. I run towards the entrance,

twist the doork.n.o.b, swing open the door, and break out into a run into the

city canopied by night, barely allowing Ryōgi a word in edgewise. Here I

am, a wanted (or soon-to-be-wanted) man sprinting to a moving company

I planned to rob in the dead of night, putting some serious thought into

how I could slip in without getting caught. Forget Ryōgi. Going on this little

excursion for a girl whose first name I didn’t even know pretty much makes

me the certified crazy one.

66 • KINOKO NASU

Paradox Spiral - III

I’ve been living with Ryōgi for close to a week now. Over time, we’ve

established a simple pattern to our lifestyle. She wakes up, sometimes

going out earlier than me. Sometime later, I go out for the day as well, and

we only really see each other’s faces again when I come back to sleep at

night. It’s strange business to be sure. At some point, we gave each other

our names, thinking that it’d be quite strange to not know each other’s

names when it’s obvious I’d be over for some time.

s.h.i.+ki Ryōgi. A repeating high school student…well, on paper at least,

considering her current truant history. That’s pretty much the sum total of

what I know about her.

She calls me by my last name, Enjō, which is why I might be given to

referring to her similarly as Ryōgi. She’s said more than once that she didn’t

like being called by her surname, but I can’t bring myself to call her s.h.i.+ki.

It’s a pretty simple reason. Calling someone by their first name has always

seemed to me to be like some stamp of permanence, but this daily life right

now is as temporary a setup as I can imagine, which means someday, me

and Ryōgi will part ways. At any given time I could be actively hunted by

the police. I could be forced to run. Calling her s.h.i.+ki, with all the baggage

that the first name tends to give you, will just weigh me down when that

day comes.

“Don’t you have a girlfriend, Enjō?”

On this night, like all the other nights, Ryōgi sits cross-legged atop her

bed, and as always, asks me a question that seems to come straight out of

nowhere. As for me, rolling around on the floor right next to her bed, I’ve

long become accustomed to them.

“If I had one, I wouldn’t need to swing by this dump every night, would

I?”

“That’s kind of strange, considering you’re not all that shabby looking.”

“That actually sounds more like an insult than a complement, coming

from you. And besides, I’ve had enough of women.”

“Interesting. Why, I wonder?” She lies down on the bed, which from my

position on the floor next to it, makes her temporarily unseen, though she

soon pops her head out directly above mine. She’s actually kind of cute like

this. “Are you gay?”

I take that back. Seeing her as anything resembling cute must have been

/ PARADOX SPIRAL - III • 67

a trick of the mind.

“No way. It’s just that, well…I’ve got a history with girls, and it didn’t

work out too well.” Before I know it, I’m already reminiscing with her. “Back

in high school, I went out with a girl for two months, and we spent most

of that quality time arguing. I didn’t want anything special from the relations.h.i.+p,

but she certainly did. She wanted all the cool, fancy things that

also happened to be expensive. I could practically hear my wallet screaming

at the time, but I still did it for her. When I could buy her things, she

was happy. When I couldn’t, she complained. That didn’t warm me to the

experience. And the s.e.x wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be, honestly. Besides,

I could’ve just jacked off if I wanted to feel good.”

I thought this story would bore Ryōgi, but she actually seems to be hanging

on every word, so I continue with a sigh. “Eventually, I started to dislike

her. All the money and affection I gave her slowly looked more like a waste

of time. Maybe if I was a normal student, I could’ve given her more of my

time, but as it stood then, I didn’t have that kind of freedom. The hours

I spent with her started draining any hours I had left for sleep. Without

the free time, I guess it was doomed from the start. But, stupid as I was, I

never tried breaking up with her.

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